Dutch people are blowing up over ABN Amro’s bonuses right now

Public outcry over bankers' bonuses is pretty common, but the
anger sweeping the Netherlands, over nationalised ABN Amro's
executive pay packets is on a completely different level.

Over the last week, Dutch
newspapers Financieele Dagblad and NOS (Holland's
version of the BBC), and other media outlets were awash with
debates over the justification of how ABN Amro’s high ranking
executives were getting huge bonuses ahead of the bank being
re-privatised.

He
even went to parliament on Thursday to answer questions
over how the government is "allowing" the bank to pay hefty
bonuses, compared what the average Dutch person receives in a
year, even though it is still yet to be privatised, after being
taken over by the state in 2008.

The Dutch government initially
hoped to make €15 billion from the IPO. This is still less
than half the total amount the state paid to rescue the bank in
the wake of the credit crisis. Meanwhile, the bank only
posted an underlying profit of €1.5 billion in 2014.

Now that our remuneration is
the subject of discussion and threatens to affect the future of
ABN Amro, we are putting the interests of the bank and the public
first - as we always do - and have decided to renounce the
allowance. We hope this will bring the bank in calmer
waters.

"The outcry is because the man
in the street is losing his job, we have not [decent] growth
since 2008 ... We as a nation are one of the slowest to get out
of the crisis," said Josefine Hekstra, an economics lecturer
at Rotterdam University, to Business Insider.

Hekstra worked at
ABN Amro in the insurance division between 1993 and 1994, just
after ABN and Amro Bank agreed to merge to in
1991.

"I understand and realise that
the salaries of our top bank executives are not what the rest of
the global market pays, but they are in comparison huge for the
average person. We have rules in the Netherlands that all
the ministers and civil servants and other employees paid by the
government (paid by the taxpayer) cannot be above the
'balkenendenorm'."

Balkenendenorm was formalised in January 2013 to make sure
that civil servants can't
be paid more than 130%
of salary of the Prime Minister. The standard was named after the
former Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende (2002-2010).

The current PM Mark Rutte is
paid around €144,000 a year. Critics, like Hekstra, say that
since ABN Amro is publicly owned, its employees should adhere to
the standard and that if bonuses, when combined with salary,
exceed this amount, then it should be stopped.

Hekstra pointed out that many
employees are also upset over the bonus hikes amid thousands of
job cuts.

"One of my friends has worked
there for 20 years and is being laid off, because the department
they work in is closing," said Hekstra. "She also mentioned that
the bonuses did not go down well with the bank employees. There
are
still thousands of layoffs happening at ABN Amro."

"I spoke to them about this
last year and they made it clear they are not prepared to. It is
up to them to reach their own conclusions about the criticism,"
he said. But he added that "it is a question of morality. Do they
think it is responsible when bank workers have had their pay
frozen for years and thousands have lost or are losing their
jobs?"